Dysphoria
by ImmortalCoelacanth
Summary: The hardest part of surviving was not the hostile lifeforms, the struggle to gather resources, or even the bacteria. It was the dreams.


**AN: God I love Subnautica so much...**

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He remembers the first time he began to experience the dreams. It was not long after he had built his base in the Grand Reef near a piece of the Aurora, a good point to access the deeper parts of that region and even get to the Lost River, but at that point he did not know this.

The shelter had quickly been completed, food and water secured thanks to filtration machines and grow beds. Creating his room had also been nice, the view of the Anchor Pods and Membrane Trees is soothing whenever he looked out his window into the dark ocean beyond.

An unintentional comfort during the most trying of times.

His bed is, without a doubt, the best part of his newest habitation. A bit stiff for his own tastes but it is much better than sleeping on the cold, hard floor all the time.

And then the dreams started happening.

The dreams always begin the same. He is floating on waves, in the ocean of Planet 4546B. He does not know how he got there or why, but he fills up his oxygen tanks while he still can.

Then he swims down.

Legs kick back and forth, arms paddle through the water, and bubbles escape his mask as he pushes himself deeper and deeper into the inky abyss below him.

There is never any land around him. No underwater islands, no rocky landforms that shoot up out of the darkness, nothing for him to use to keep track of how far down he is. There is only him and the slowly fading light.

The ocean is silent.

And he keeps swimming.

His goal is never clear, all he knows is that he _has to_ keep swimming down, an instinctive urge not for his survival, but for something else. It is like there is a chord attached to his chest, constantly tugging him down.

An excited child pulling at their parent's arm in an attempt to show them something interesting.

Just as the darkness of the ocean starts closing in he wakes up. He is always confused, expecting himself to still be swimming when he sits up in his bed, but he ultimately disregards the dreams as a side effect of how much time he spent in the alien ocean.

After encountering the Sea Emperor Leviathan he assumed that the dreams had happened because of her. That they were her way of calling him down to the Primary Containment Facility so he could help her hatch the eggs that would be his salvation.

So he stayed with her until her final moments, watching her breathing slow to a stop and praying that the dreams would to.

They continued.

He swims deeper, the tugging sensation within his chest growing stronger.

Now he manages to pierce through the darkness that makes up the lower part of the ocean in his mind. He sees nothing, but he can feel... _things_ swimming with him.

Large creatures, the size of the Ghost Leviathan he had encountered on the edge of the crater when he had stupidly decided to explore so far away from his base. Though he is certain the monstrous beings are not a species he has ever encountered before

However none of them notice him, and he keeps swimming.

There are several times in his dreams where he runs out of air, the precious oxygen in his tanks hitting zero, but he wakes up before he suffocates, gasping for breath. It was like he had truly been drowning.

Then again, just like Marguerit said, he had _always_ been drowning on that planet, just very slowly.

Now back on _his_ home planet, in _his_ bedroom and not the ocean he had been subjected to for a month and a half he expects the dreams to end.

But they get worse.

Not only do the dreams continue, they slowly begin to feel more real, leading to a sense of disconnect with the world around him whenever he wakes up.

As he swims further down into the inky abyss he can feel himself _changing_ to reflect his new surroundings. His diving suit tearing apart as his body mutates.

Legs fusing together into one, elongated tail that trails behind him through the water. Webbing that forms between his fingers, mock fins to make swimming easier. Scales that rip through his skin, much like the glowing green cysts that had plagued his body while he had still been infected.

The process should be painful but instead it feels oddly freeing, as if he is changing into something he should have been all along. There is a strange sensation that rises in his chest, makes him feel lighter than he has ever felt. Some unknown emotion, or perhaps he was simply developing an air bladder.

With his new limbs he swims faster than before and this time he can _see_ something at the bottom of the near endless ocean, a lack of darkness that nearly blinds him, a light.

He can hear it calling to him, singing words in a language he understands not with his mind but with his _soul_.

And then he wakes up.

His lungs always refuse to work at first, as if insisting that his body should have _gills_ and _where have they gone this is all wrong_. When he finally takes that first, gasping breath, it is not a relief.

He feels like he is still suffocating.

He never tells anyone about these episodes, terrified of what the outcome might be.

Would Alterra take him, hide him away while they experimented on him and tried to figure out what the isolation on that planet had done to him? He is not sure what he is more scared of, what they might do to him or what they might find.

Was he still human after everything he had been through? Could _anyone_ remain human after such an event?

What was it to be human, anyways, to have humanity?

Many would claim that it had been inhumane to kill all those living creatures, the Peepers, Garryfish, Boomerangs, and Bladderfish that had made up his diet when he first started surviving, never mind those that he had killed before they could kill him, when he could have eaten fruit and vegetables instead.

 _He does not dare mention how some part of him began to revel in the feeling of biting through flesh, the sensations of ripping apart another creature in a desperate struggle to survive and that even when his gardens began to bloom he still hunted because it_ felt so good-

He does not know anymore.

His friends are another challenge. The way they constantly try to reach out to him and check on how he is doing. The worry present in their eyes, the fear for what the extended isolation had done to him.

But he was not Ryley. Ryley had died when the Aurora had crashed along with the rest of his crew.

He was the survivor, the one who had managed to cure the Kharaa Bacterium and save an entire planet, the one who had killed and nearly been killed in return.

He is the one who lived when he should have died, but no one seems to know this. They only see the empty shell of what had once been their companion and do not _understand_ the changes he had been through.

The changes he is _still_ going through.

He swims deeper, and the voices keep singing.

 _Come home, come home,_ they cry and he wants to scream because _he is home he has been home for the past several months just leave me alone please!_

Eventually they follow him outside of the dreams and the disconnect is stronger than before, the sheer dysphoria he goes through every morning leaves him breathless and unable to cope, unable to _understand._

 _Why_ , he wonders to himself when he is finally away from the therapists and psychiatrists, _why am I still suffering when I should be free?_

He does not know who he asks this question to, be it himself or the voices that plague his mind.

 _Home, home, please come home._

He swims deeper.

"Make it stop." He wheezes, voice hoarse from disuse. "Please make it stop."

The singing continues.

His blood is red but it should be _yellow and everything is wrongwrongwrong-_

He swims deeper.

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 **AN: To me the most terrifying part of this game is not what you actually experience in the ocean, but what it must be like to try and go back to a normal life after all of that...**

 **Well I hope you all enjoyed this one shot! Reviews will be greatly appreciated and thank you for reading!**

 **\- ImmortalCoelacanth**


End file.
